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The relationship between English proficiency and humour appreciation

among English L1 users and Chinese L2 users of English

Article  in  Applied Linguistics Review · April 2018

DOI: 10.1515/applirev-2018-0002

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 1

Xuemei Chen* and Jean-Marc Dewaele

The relationship between English proficiency and humour

appreciation among English L1 users and Chinese L2 users of
English1

https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2018-0002

Abstract
Humour appreciation involves split second detection and resolution of cultural and pragmatic
incongruities. Second language (L2) users may need more time and effort to understand and
appreciate L2 humour. Previous studies have mostly used decontextualized verbal jokes and
reported a linear relationship between L2 proficiency and humour appreciation. The present study
strives for more ecological validity by using audiovisual-based, multimodal humorous stimuli. A
total of 272 Chinese L2 users of English and 94 English L1 users rated the funniness and the ease of
understanding of two short video extracts and then completed an English vocabulary size test,
LexTALE. The findings suggest that L2 users need to reach a certain threshold in L2 linguistic,
pragmatic and sociocultural knowledge before a positive linear relationship emerges between
proficiency and appreciation of multimodal humorous stimuli. Also, advanced L2 users
demonstrated similarities with English L1 users in humour processing.

Key words: L2 humour appreciation, L2 vocabulary size, ease of understanding, Chinese L2 users
of English, English L1 users

1. Introduction

Humour is a ubiquitous, universal, elusive phenomenon which exists in all societies and cultures
and fulfills a range of social, cognitive and emotional functions (Martin 2010). American
entertainer Steve Allen (1990) has described humour as a social lubricant. This lubricant plays a
vital role in the second language (L2) communication where misunderstandings can occur.
However, humour’s elusiveness and ambiguity implies that it can fall flat easily. It poses linguistic
and pragmatic challenges even to L1 users2.

1
This is the pre-print version of the paper published in 2018 Applied Linguistics Review
2
We adopt the neutral dichotomy “First Language Users (L1 users)” versus “Foreign Language
Users (LX users)” rather than the value-laden “Native versus Non Native Speakers” (cf. Dewaele,
2018).
 2
Research on L2 humour has focused on production rather than perception (e.g. Bell et al. 2014;
Shively 2013). Despite the rich theoretical and empirical work on theory of humour in L1, studies
examining L2 humour perception and appreciation, especially the relationship between L2
proficiency level and L2 humour appreciation are still in its infancy. The handful of studies (e.g.
Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. 2017; Bell and Attardo 2010; Erdodi and Lajiness-O’Neill 2012) touching
upon the link between L2 proficiency level and L2 humour appreciation have yielded inconsistent
findings, probably due to variation in methodology, i.e. the choice of humour stimuli and
instruments for measuring L2 proficiency, as well as in variation in language profile and
proficiency level of participants.
The present study focuses on the effect of L2 proficiency on the appreciation and ease of
understanding of L2 humour among Chinese L2 users of English. We then extend the investigation
to English L1 users in order to find out whether variation in L1 vocabulary size is linked to ease of
understanding and appreciation of humour.

2. Understanding humour

2.1. The humour code

Humour is difficult to define but there is agreement that it involves cognitive disjunction, an
appraisal of a situation as incongruity (e.g. between scripts, frames of references, category
boundaries) which is then made congruous, either as a forced choice (e.g. Attardo and Raskin 1991)
or of listeners’ own volition (Veale 2004), causing an emotional shift. In cognitive linguistics,
Veale (2015) complemented the incongruity-resolution theory by proposing a subversion view of
humour, in which humour is taken as a compressed thought experiment involving creative
subversions at levels of verbal meaning, conceptual mappings, figures of speech, pragmatic uses
and cultural stereotypes. Coulson (2015: 171) further suggested that humour comprehension
requires frame-shifting which elicits a processing cost and regressive eye movements, and involves
different brainwaves and brain regions. There is no doubt that humour comprehension is a complex
and cognitively challenging process. Furthermore, in psychology, McGraw and Warren (2010)
proposed that humour is elicited by an appraisal of a situation as violations which are perceived as
benign simultaneously if three conditions are met: the presence of alternative explanation, weak
commitment to the violated norm and a certain psychological distance to it.
Factors affecting both cognitive and emotional experiences include complexity of the humorous
stimuli, ease of understanding and emotional intensity. Raskin (2008) found that sophistication
correlates positively with the complexity of inferences, suggesting that humour with characteristics
of domain-specificity, complexity, novelty and subtlety are perceived funnier than those without
 3
these characteristics. More efforts invested in resolving conceptual incompatibility can bring about
a feeling of achievement. Ease of understanding, usually related to complexity of humorous stimuli
and the time taken to search for resolution, is presumed to have an inverted-U relationship with
humour appreciation (Cunningham and Derks 2005), meaning that humour is perceived as funny
when its difficulty level is neither too high nor too low. Too much difficulty results in perplexity,
while too much simplicity leads to boredom. This relationship applies to emotional arousal and
humour appreciation as well, as humour is best appreciated when an individual is at a moderate
level of emotional arousal (e.g. Godkewitsch 1972). More research is needed to identify all the
factors that affect humour appreciation.

2.2. Modality of humour

Despite its elusiveness, humour is ubiquitous in various forms including, but not limited to,
verbal humour (e.g. jokes), visual humour (caricature), sensory humour (tickling and olfactory
humour) and audio-visual humour. In real-life situations, humour seldom functions in mono-
modality. Rather, it exists in certain contexts, in interactions with the surroundings, encoded in
various semiotic systems, verbal or nonverbal, such as speech, sounds, gesture, facial expressions,
physical appearances, body gestures and postures, image, background music and so on. Fine argued
that “humour is a most delicate flower: a living bud which when plucked quickly dies” (1977: 315).
Ruiz-Madrid and Fortanet-Gómez (2015) adopted a multimodal discourse analysis approach to
study the role of humour in human-to-human interaction, conferences presentations in particular,
with special focus on paralinguistic (loudness/stress) and kinesics feature (movements with
pragmatic function).

3. Humour in L2

3.1. Research on L2 humour

Research on humour in an L2 only started at the dawn of the new millennium. In 2000, Vaid
proposed a research agenda on humour interpretation in the spirit of Pavlenko’s (1999) call for
research on conceptual representations in bilinguals, and believed that it would be a paradigmatic
case and a fertile testing ground for the study of bilinguals’ semantic versus conceptual
representation. In her 2006 study, Vaid listed areas of potential interest in studies on humour,
emotion and bilingualism, directing future research to investigating whether and how humour
changes as a function of socialisation and acculturation. Furthermore, Vaid (2015) found that
bilinguals’ increased metalinguistic awareness and heightened sensitivity are advantages in joke
detection.
 4
Meanwhile, Bell and her colleagues have developed L2 humour research within L2 pedagogy
for years. They argued that L2 language play in L2 classrooms can be a maker of proficiency, a
practice facilitating L2 learning as it can lead to deeper processing of lexical items, provide access
to many linguistic practices that are devalued, and play an important role in shaping learners’
identities and developing their multi-competent selves and communicative repertoire (Bell 2005;
Bell 2009; Bell 2011; Bell and Pomerantz 2014; Bell et al. 2014; Pomerantz and Bell 2007;
Pomerantz and Bell 2011).
In response to the call for more humour research in L2, a number of fresh studies emerged in
this area which will be discussed in the following sections.

3.2. Understanding L2 humour appreciation

As suggested in previous sections, humour can also be understood as a phenomenon involving

shared codes, knowledge and emotional significance (Chiaro 2009). The differences in language,
culture and emotional significance could result in variations in humour perception among L2 users.
Language
Humour usually involves incongruity at various linguistic levels. It is plausible that the lack of
proficiency in the L2 may hinder the understanding of L2 humour. Carrell (1997) demonstrated that
linguistic competence makes the cognitive processing of humour complicated. It is a necessary
stage for comprehending the humour content. Only after this stage can the receiver know whether
or not the content is intended to amuse and then decide whether he or she appreciates it. The
difficulty in linguistic processing of L2 humour has been documented. Vaid (2000) argued that the
particular way in which incongruities are formed and resolved may reflect semantic representations
as when core versus peripheral word meaning are in competition with each other. Bell and Attardo
identified seven levels at which L2 users can fail to engage in humorous activities, with the first two
being “failure to process language at the locutionary level” and “failure to understand the meaning
of words (including connotations)” (2010: 430).
Culture
Apart from semantic representations, Vaid (2000) argued that the nature of the incongruities is
likely to reflect culturally influenced conceptual representations. Any unmatched conceptual
representations could result in violations in cultural norms to varying degrees. The development of
L2 users’ cultural knowledge and the change of their cultural identity as a result of acculturation or
conceptual socialisation during L2 acquisition may lead to the change or restructuring of their
humour perception in either or both languages (Vaid 2006).
Emotion
 5
L2 users generally experience reduced emotionality and increased detachment in the L2
(Dewaele, 2013); Caldwell-Harris and Ayçiçeği-Dinn 2009; Pavlenko 2012). Recently, Dewaele
and Salomidou (2017) found that half of participants who were in an intercultural couple reported a
lack of emotional resonance in the LX at the start of the relationship. On the other hand, the
emotional detachment also allowed them to discuss strong feelings more freely in the LX.
Therefore, one could wonder whether the reduced emotionality and detachment would also affect
L2 users’ affective processing of L2 humour. As humour can involve an emotional shift from a
feeling of surprise or threat to relief and amusement, it is possible that variation in emotional
arousal during affective processing could lead to variation in humour appreciation. One may fail to
feel surprised in L2 humour due to the failure to find any intended violations; alternatively, one may
feel surprised but not amused.

3.3. Multi-competence and L2 humour appreciation

Researchers working in the multi-competence framework have argued that L2 users could draw
on a wider range of strategies and deploy their increased linguistic repertoire for language play (e.g.
Bell 2009). However, few studies have linked the issue of L2 humour appreciation with multi-
competence— “the overall system of a mind or a community that uses more than one language”
(Cook 2016: 3), an approach that adopts a social, dynamic, multifaceted view of language and
language use. In their 2015 paper, Vaid, López and Martínez found that bilinguals tend to be more
accurate in joke detection than monolinguals, and interpreted this result as bilinguals being more
careful and thorough in joke processing. Meanwhile, Vaid asserted that a dual cultural perspective
may change L2 users’ attitudes towards or belief in humour and “expand their types of humour they
can produce and appreciate” (2006: 176). These studies suggest that L2 users are multi-competent
language users who have demonstrated differences, or advantages, in their language and cognitive
systems, and their multi-competence plays an important role in their appreciation of L2 humour.
Indeed, Vaid (2006: 177) suggests that L2 users may have a “keen sensitivity to ambiguity,
intertextuality, and irony, elements that underlie the perception and expression of humour”.

3.4. L2 proficiency and L2 humour appreciation

An increased cognitive load, decreased emotionality and increased foreign language anxiety
(Dewaele, 2013) are among the factors that can cause longer response latencies even for proficient
L2 users, especially L2 humour which is more cognitively challenging. Studies addressing the link
between L2 proficiency and L2 humour largely focused on L2 humour production, few on L2
humour comprehension. Erdodi and Lajiness-O’Neill (2012) investigated the effect of language
dominance on culture-specific humour perception among 91 L1 users of English, L1 users of
Hungarian and English-Hungarian bilinguals (fully acculturated to the American culture). Each
 6
group was asked to rate the funniness of different sets of 32 jokes that were partially overlapped
(translated across languages). An effect of the language of jokes on humour perception was found,
and it was mediated by language dominance, but only in the Hungarian dominant group. This study
highlighted the importance of multicultural competence in humour comprehension.
Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. (2017) wondered whether jokes are funnier in the L1 than in the L2. To
answer the question, they selected 16 jokes in Turkish and English. The jokes had no language play
nor cultural references and were translated across languages. Participants were 160 university
students in Istanbul who had studied English as an L2 and 30 American English L1 students.
Turkish participants whose English L2 ranged from good to excellent reported finding the jokes in
the L2 funnier than in their L1 – something the authors attribute to a feeling of achievement and the
ability to hit the sweet spot when the jokes are neither too simple nor too difficult. The participants
with weaker English L2 found the jokes equally funny or funnier in the L1. L2 humour appreciation
was thus linked to proficiency of L2 users, and ease of understanding was positively associated with
humour appreciation similarly in all groups of participants including L1 users. The authors argued
that higher L2 proficiency levels facilitate basic language processing as well as joke processing by
enhancing timely script activation or frame shifting.

3.5. Implication for the present study

In sum, these studies suggest that L2 proficiency level is related -to some extent- to humour
appreciation. However, researchers all relied on mono-modal, written, pre-scripted, cross-translated
and decontextualized jokes as stimuli which had the advantage of tight control of the experiment
but limited its ecological validity (Schmuckler 2001). The present study aims to increase ecological
validity by using multimodal, interactional humorous stimuli, namely two video clips selected from
popular British sitcoms. The main advantage is that film fragments offer a fairly accurate
representation of naturally occurring speech (Rose 2001).

4. Research questions

This study aims to answer the following five questions:

(1) Do L1 users find multimodal humorous L1 stimuli funnier and easier to understand than L2
users?
(2) Do L1 users with higher proficiency (i.e. larger vocabulary size) find multimodal humorous L1
stimuli funnier than L1 users with lower proficiency?
(3) Do L2 users with higher L2 proficiency find multimodal humorous L2 stimuli funnier than L2
users with lower proficiency?
 7
(4) Do L2 users with higher L2 proficiency find multimodal humorous L2 stimuli easier to
understand than L2 users with lower proficiency?
(5) Is there a relationship between ease of understanding and funniness ratings of multimodal
humorous stimuli among L1 and L2 users?

5. Methodology

The present study used a video-embedded web-questionnaire. Snowball sampling was used,
asking participants to recruit their friends who spread the call for participation to their friends and
contacts. The study received ethical approval from the authors’ research institution.

5.1. Participants

A total of 272 Chinese L2 users of English (185 females and 87 males) took part in this study.
The average age was 24 (SD = 5.82), ranging from 18 to 65 years old. The majority of them were
living in China (57%) and the UK (35%), and tended to be highly educated (PhD and MA: 55%).
Participants all had Mandarin Chinese or other varieties of Chinese as their L1 and English as L2.
Many reported to have knowledge of other languages (up to 5). Two thirds of participants started
learning English before or at primary school and three quarters at secondary school. Most of them
reported regular use of English. In addition, participants’ overall self-reported English proficiency
level was quite high (M = 3.43, SD = 0.9), as calculated by averaging their rating of English
proficiency level in each four skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) on a scale from 1 to 5
(1 = minimal proficiency, 5 = maximal proficiency).
We also collected data from 94 UK-based English L1 users (60 females and 33 males)3. The
average age was 43 (SD = 17.5), ranging from 18 to 74 years old. English was reported to be their
L1, acquired either independently or simultaneously with other languages (up to 7 languages). This
group of participants also tended to be highly educated, with 55% of them holding or currently
studying for either a Master’s or a Doctoral degree, 34% a Bachelor’s degree, and only 11% had
secondary school qualifications.

5.2. Instruments

Our online questionnaire consisted of four parts. The first two parts concerned participants’
sociobiographical and linguistic background from which the information presented above was
extracted. The third part consisted of two L2 humour appreciation tasks. Firstly, participants were
presented with two one-minute-long videos clips selected from two popular British sitcoms: Yes,

3
One participant chose the “others” option.
 8
Prime Minister and Outnumbered respectively, both acted by British English speaking actors. Yes,
Prime Minister was intended to satirise politics and governments. The show, aired from 1980 to
1988, resembled reality to the extent that it was viewed as “unhealthily close to life” (Crisell 2002:
201). The selected extract comes from the final episode “The Tangled Web”.
The second sitcom, Outnumbered, aired during 2007 to 2014, was centred on a contemporary
middle-class family in Western London. The show was semi-improvised to achieve genuine and
natural performances from the children. The video clip was extracted from the episode called
“Keeping Up with The Joneses”, which is a well-known English idiom referring to the comparison
to one’s neighbour as a benchmark for social class or the possession of material goods. Both
extracts were selected because they were funny and shared the ever-popular theme of social class in
British humour (Laineste 2014). The transcripts and URL links to the videos are available in
Appendix.
The register in the two videos was different. In Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby, the
minister’s Permanent Secretary, tries to explain to the Prime Minister that the latter had been
“lying” while avoiding the word ‘lie”. In order to avoid direct face-threat, Humphrey resorts to
euphemisms and produces a careful, impressive-sounding, tangled, complicated and increasingly
ridiculous English sentence consisting of more than 80 words including technical and academic
terms. The language used in Outnumbered was typical of daily life conversations between two
middle class neighbours with neither technical terms nor complicated sentences. The clip presents a
strong contrast between the children of the neighbours who seem to be socially superior because
their children go to a private school (they wear a boater) and are exceptionally well-behaved in
presence of their mother Barbara, in contrast with Jake, Ben and Karen who swear and misbehave
to the shame of their mother Sue. The swearwords are not overly offensive and represent a benign
violation that makes “bad” behavior funny (McGraw and Warren 2010).
In order to estimate the lexical and syntactic diversity of the two videos, we calculated the
type/token ratio4 (see Table 1) which was higher for Yes, Prime Minister than for Outnumbered.
Not only had Yes, Prime Minister more lexical diversity, it also contained more low frequency
words such as “magnitude”, “semantic”, “epithet”, “correlation” and “epistemological”. The extract
of Yes, Prime Minister had a higher mean length of utterance than Outnumbered. It thus seems that
Yes, Prime Minister was linguistically more complex than Outnumbered.

Table 1. Summary of text characteristics

Yes, Prime Outnumbered

4
As the fragments were of similar length, the TTR allows a fairly good comparison of lexical
diversity (cf. McCarthy & Jarvis, 2010).
 9
Minister
Lexical diversity Tokens 151 140
Types 90 77
Type Token Ratio 0.60 0.55
Syntactic complexity Mean length of utterance (in words) 13.7 5.8

Each video clip was followed by a first question about ease of understanding of the language in
the video with a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 representing “not at all” and 5 “complete
understanding”. Then, they were asked to rate the funniness of each video on a 5-point Likert scale,
with 1 representing “not funny at all” and 5 “extremely funny”. The choice of a single item was
deliberate as we wanted to elicit a holistic snap judgment from participants. Wilcoxon Signed
Ranks test indicated that there was no significant difference in participants’ funniness rating
between the two videos (Z = -1.88, p = ns). Outnumbered was perceived as significantly easier to
understand than Yes, Prime Minister (Z = -8.02, p < .001). L1 users found both videos equally
funny (Z = -.571, p = ns) but agreed that Outnumbered was significantly easier to understand than
Yes, Prime Minister (Z = -4.70, p < .001). In other words, the funniness of the two videos remained
constant regardless of linguistic difficulty.
Participants filled out the English version of the LexTALE test (Lemhöfer and Broersma 2012).
It is an objective measure of English vocabulary size for intermediate and advanced learners,
allowing greater accuracy and detail than more general self-ratings for L2 proficiency level.
Previous research has shown that even L1 users do not score at ceiling (Lorette & Dewaele 2015),
and show variation in their scores due to various factors like age, education, frequency of domain-
specific use, social network, multilingualism and the wax and wane of languages over one’s life
span (see Keuleers et al. 2015). It consists of 60 items and participants had to indicate whether or
not each item was an existing English word and each participant obtained a total score from 0 to
100. The test is a valid measure of English vocabulary size and correlates strongly with measures of
general English proficiency in L2 users (Lemhöfer and Broersma 2012). In the present study, for
Chinese L2 users of English, the test was significantly positively correlated with their self-reported
general English proficiency (rho (272) = .509, p < .01), and with English listening ability (rho (272)
= .452, p < .01) in particular. Participants’ English listening ability might be of particular interest as
the appreciation of audio-visual, multimodal humorous stimuli used in this study requires good
listening ability. In addition, its reliability in the present study is high (Cronbach’s Alpha = .785).
For Chinese L2 users of English, the mean score for their LexTALE test was 65.9 (SD = 15.5),
generally at an upper intermediate level according to Lemhöfer and Broersma’s (2012)
classification of general proficiency levels: upper and lower advanced/proficient users (80~100),
 10
upper intermediate users (60~79)5 and lower intermediate and lower (below 59). The sample (n =
272) was divided according to this classification (see Table 2). The mean score for English L1
users’ LexTALE test was 95.2 (SD = 7.6), ranging from 50 to 100, with approximately 95% of
them scoring over 80.

Table 2. LexTALE scores of Chinese L2 users of English at different proficiency levels

Proficiency level M SD Min Max

Advanced users (n = 62) 89.1 6.5 80 100
Upper intermediate users (n = 96) 67.7 5.7 60 78.8
Lower intermediate and lower (n = 114) 51.7 4.5 40 58.8

The Shapiro-Wilk test showed that the distribution was not normal (p < .01). Therefore, we used
non-parametric statistics including Spearman’s rho rank correlation, Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-
Whitney U test as alternatives for parametric statistics. We present the results separately for the two
videos in the next section.

6. Results

6.1. Difference between L1 and L2 users’ funniness ratings and ease of understanding

A Mann–Whitney U test revealed a significant difference between both groups in funniness

ratings of both videos, with English L1 users having higher scores than the Chinese L2 users of
English (U = 6088, Z = -7.85, p < .001; U = 6521, Z = -7.33, p < .001). A similar – but slightly
larger - difference emerged between both groups for ease of understanding for both videos (U =
3424, Z = -10.93, p < .001; U = 3183, Z = -11.44, p < .001) (see Figure 1).

5
The range of scores for upper intermediate users is from 60 to 80 in Lemhöfer and Broersma’s
(2012). We changed “80” into “79” to avoid the overlap of data.
 11

English L1 users Chinese L2 users of English

Degree of funniness/ease
4

2
Yes, Prime Minister Yes, Prime Minister Outnumbered Outnumbered
(Funniness) (Ease) (Funniness) (Ease)

Figure 1. Funniness rating and ease of understanding between L1 and L2 users

6.2. The effect of English L1 vocabulary size on funniness ratings of the video clips

A Spearman’s rank-order correlation found no relationship between English L1 users’

proficiency scores and funniness ratings for both Yes, Prime Minister (rho (94) = .056, p = ns), and
Outnumbered (rho (94) = .178, p = ns).

6.3. The effect of English L2 proficiency on funniness ratings of the video clips

We will start with a comparison of the three proficiency groups (advanced, upper and lower
intermediate), followed by a correlation analysis on the whole group of L2 users, and finally by
separate analyses for each of the three groups.

Yes, Prime Minister

A series of Mann-Whitney tests (with Bonferroni correction) showed that all proficiency groups
were significantly different (all p < .003) from each other in terms of funniness rating. A
Spearman’s rho rank correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between L2
proficiency of Chinese L2 users of English and funniness ratings (Table 3). However, a scatterplot
with a LOESS line (locally weighted smoothing line) for the relationship between the two variables
showed a flat line at lower levels of proficiency with an “elbow” at the proficiency score of 70,
followed by linear increase at higher levels of proficiency (Figure 2). The separate correlation
analyses confirmed this finding. Proficiency and funniness ratings were unrelated at lower and
upper intermediate levels but a positive relationship emerged in the advanced group.

Table 3. Correlation between proficiency scores and funniness rating among the three groups of
Chinese L2 users of English

Yes, Prime Minister (Funniness rating)

 12
Advanced Upper intermediate Lower intermediate All
Proficiency rho .314* 0.012 -0.091 .159**
p 0.013 0.909 0.338 0.009
n 62 96 114 272
Outnumbered (Funniness rating)
Advanced Upper intermediate Lower intermediate All
Proficiency rho 0.000 -0.089 -0.029 0.098
p 0.998 0.386 0.785 0.108
n 62 96 114 272

Figure 2. Scatterplot of L2 users’ proficiency scores and funniness rating with fit line (LOESS line)
for Yes, Prime Minister

Outnumbered
Kruskal-Wallis tests showed that there were no significant differences in funniness ratings
between the three groups (χ2 (2) = 4.2, p = ns). Similarly, results of Spearman’s correlation analysis
and a scatterplot with LOESS line (see Table 3 and Figure 3) indicated that no significant
relationship existed between proficiency scores and funniness ratings among Chinese L2 users of
English as a whole, nor in any of the 3 proficiency groups.
 13

Figure 3. Scatterplot of L2 users’ proficiency scores and funniness rating with fit line (LOESS line)
for Outnumbered

6.4. The effect of L2 proficiency on ease of understanding of the video clips

Yes, Prime Minister

A series of Mann-Whitney tests (with Bonferroni correction) indicated that advanced L2 users
reported a significantly better understanding than both upper intermediate L2 users (U = 1415, Z = -
5.84, p < .001) and lower intermediate L2 users (U =1203, Z = -7.48, p < .001). No significant
difference was found between upper intermediate and lower intermediate L2 users (U = 4535, Z = -
2.23, p = ns) (see Figure 4).

Outnumbered
Results of a series of Mann-Whitney tests showed that each proficiency group was significantly
different from one another in terms of ease of understanding (U = 1630, Z = -5.09, p <.001; U =
1244, Z = -7.34, p < .001; U = 4176, Z = -3.07, p < .002) (Figure 4).
 14
6 Yes, Prime Minister Outnumbered

Degree of ease of understanding

5

2
Advanced Upper Lower
intermediate intermediate

Figure 4. Ease of understanding between groups with different L2 proficiency

6.5. The relationship between ease of understanding and funniness ratings

English L1 users’ ease of understanding was significantly positively correlated with funniness
ratings for both Yes, Prime Minister (rho (94) = .220, p < .05) and Outnumbered (rho (94) = .215, p
< .05).
For Chinese L2 users of English, ease of understanding was significantly positively correlated
with funniness ratings for Yes, Prime Minister within each of the three proficiency groups. The
relationship was the strongest among advanced L2 users who also found the stimuli easier to
understand than relatively less proficient L2 users. A similar relationship emerged among the L2
users for Outnumbered, though strength of association weakened as proficiency level increased,
fading completely among advanced L2 users. (see Table 4).

Table 4. Correlation between ease of understanding and funniness rating among Chinese L2 users
of English

Yes, Prime Minister (Funniness rating)

Advanced Upper intermediate Lower intermediate All
Ease of rho .397** .238* .392** .383**
understanding
p 0.001 0.019 0.000 0.000
n 62 96 114 272
Outnumbered (Funniness rating)
Advanced Upper intermediate Lower intermediate All
Ease of rho 0.233 .232* .651** .422**
understanding
p 0.068 0.023 0.000 0.000
n 62 96 114 272
 15

7. Discussion

The answer to the first research question was positive. English L1 users found both video clips
funnier and easier to understand than L2 users. This is not surprising, as L1 users would have faced
fewer lexical and syntactic challenges, which means they could process the meanings, the concepts
and the relevant sociocultural information faster than L2 users, thus finding the stimuli easier to
understand, which in turn, facilitated timely detection and resolution of incongruities. This finding
is in line with Bell and Attardo (2010) who reported that L2 users’ failure to process the language at
the locutionary level was among the reasons why L2 users were less likely to appreciate the humour
than L1 users. Additionally, the finding that L2 users perceived the stimuli as being less funny than
L1 users could be linked to the lower emotionality of the L2 and a weaker reaction to the violation
of Grice’s (1975) maxims of quality and quantity in Sir Humphrey’s long and twisted sentence. In
Outnumbered, L2 users might not react with the same emotional intensity when hearing children
swear in the presence of their parents, because of a lack of emotional resonance of these
swearwords and uncertainty about the in/appropriateness of their use in that particular context
(Dewaele 2013; Dewaele 2016).
With regard to the second research question, no significant linear relationship between English
L1 users’ proficiency and funniness rating was found in both video clips. It suggests that linguistic
complexity in the videos does not create barriers to L1 users’ appreciation of humour in their L1.
The fact that L1 users found Yes, Prime Minister less easy to understand than Outnumbered but still
equally funny with the latter indicates that there may be other factors involved that facilitate their
appreciation of humour in Yes, Prime Minister. A quick additional statistical analysis revealed that
L1 users’ age (rho (94) = .401, p < .001) and number of languages known (rho (94) = .291, p < .01)
were positively and significantly linked to their funniness rating for Yes, Prime Minister, but not for
Outnumbered. A similar relationship was found for education and funniness rating for Yes, Prime
Minister, though the relationship was marginally significant. Considering that Yes, Prime Minister
was first aired in the 1980s, the results suggest that older and more highly educated participants had
an advantage in understanding the social dynamics in the video, thus facilitating humour
processing. They would have understood that Sir Humphrey was obfuscating, producing an
impressive but opaque, long-winded statement, in order to avoid the blunt accusation that the Prime
minister had lied.
The third research question focused on the effect of L2 proficiency on funniness ratings among
Chinese L2 users of English. For Yes, Prime Minister, proficiency and funniness ratings were
unrelated at lower and upper intermediate levels but a positive relationship emerged in the advanced
group. No relationship between the two variables was found in any proficiency group for
 16
Outnumbered. This suggests that the L2 users needed to reach a certain proficiency threshold before
a link appeared between humour appreciation and proficiency in linguistically complex humour. It
is reasonable to assume that advanced L2 users, like L1 users, are capable of processing the
meanings, the concepts and the relevant information faster than intermediate L2 users in
recognising and appreciating humour with higher linguistic complexity. Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. (2017)
suggested that humour can be facilitated by linguistic processing that is specific to processing jokes,
such as by enhancing timely script activation or frame shifting (also see Coulson 2015). The
advanced L2 users might also have had the necessary sociocultural knowledge to interpret the social
implications of the tussle between Sir Humphrey and the Prime Minister. In the absence of
linguistic difficulty, less advanced L2 users can appreciate L2 humour just as much as more
advanced L2 users. The social dynamics in the clip of Outnumbered is easier to catch, as anyone
who is a parent will have compared their children’s behaviour with that of other children in
presence of their parents, and may have experienced shame or pride in the comparison.
The originality of the present study resides in the finding that the relationship between L2
proficiency level and L2 humour appreciation is not always linear and is thus more complex and
dynamic than previously reported (e.g. Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. 2017). The finding that there was no
significant difference in funniness ratings between the two videos among L2 users was also
intriguing.
We argue that the use of verbal decontextualized jokes in previous research risks
oversimplifying a complex interaction of sociocultural, linguistic and pragmatic factors that
contribute to humour appreciation. While decontextualisation has the advantage of increasing a
researcher’s control over the experiment, excluding potentially confounding variables, it also
weakens its ecological validity as humour thrives in complex and messy social contexts. Our
multimodal audio-visual stimuli offered a rich array of humour cues such as facial expressions,
body language, tone of voice and word choice, which approximate language users’ experiences with
humour. The disadvantage was that it was impossible to measure the exact impact of the various
cues.
Regarding the fourth research question, results indicated that ease of understanding increased
linearly from lower intermediate to advanced L2 users for both videos. This is not surprising as
higher proficiency levels are usually linked to more automatic and less conscious processing at
various linguistic levels which is less demanding for working memory, and the possibility for
partial comprehension or miscomprehension is lower (see Révész and Brunfaut 2013). Moreover,
more advanced L2 users were more likely to have complete semantic and conceptual
representations of the words and expressions used, as well as the required sociopragmatic
knowledge to understand and interpret the conversational implicatures (Dewaele 2013; Dewaele
 17
2016; Grice 1975). The finding that upper and lower intermediate L2 users had similar scores in
ease of understanding for Yes, Prime Minister suggests that they had not yet cleared all the
linguistic and pragmatic hurdles in their L2.
The final research question related to the relationship between ease of understanding and
funniness ratings. For Yes, Prime Minister, advanced L2 users who had the greatest ease of
understanding appreciated the humour more than the upper and lower intermediate L2 users. As
discussed above, a lower proficiency probably increases the cognitive load when processing
difficult linguistic input and the amount of resources needed to appreciate the L2 humour.
Advanced L2 users, on the other hand, could deal with a high cognitive load and recognise the
intended humour because of more advanced pragmatic and sociocultural knowledge. This
realisation might have boosted their feeling of achievement, thus leading to higher appreciation of
humour. This finding may suggest that humour is perceived the funniest when its difficulty level is
neither too high nor too low but intermediate (cf. Cunningham and Derks 2005). The difficulty level
from Yes, Prime Minister was neither too high nor too low for advanced L2 users. It hit their “sweet
spot” just about right. This might also explain why advanced L2 users perceived Yes, Prime
Minister as funnier than Outnumbered. However, for intermediate L2 users, the linguistic
complexity of Yes, Prime Minister must have been a bit too high to hit their “sweet spot”.
Contrary to the situation in Yes, Prime Minister, advanced L2 users’ appreciation of humour in
Outnumbered was not linked to their ease of understanding. We speculate that the effect was
neutralised by other interactional cues of humour in Outnumbered. Due to its relative linguistic
simplicity, fewer cognitive resources were required for linguistic processing and for pragmatic
analysis. Therefore, advanced L2 users could pay more attention to other cues in humour
processing, such as characters’ accents, physical appearance, facial expressions, gestures and so
forth. In fact, this assumption is supported by the finding that the link between funniness rating and
ease of understanding of Outnumbered weakened at higher L2 proficiency levels. It is impossible to
attribute judgments of funniness to any single cause. A number of linguistic and psychological
dimensions interact and predict L2 users’ ability to detect and appreciate humour.6
Upper and lower intermediate L2 users were probably able to rely more on various non-
linguistic cues to compensate for their lower level of L2 proficiency in decoding linguistically
complex L2 humour. This is consistent with Bell’s (2007) argument that non- or partial-

6
The present study is a part of a larger research project (Chen, in progress1). Apart from the data on
L2 users’ sociobiographical and linguistic profiles, more factors like personality traits were
collected. A closer look at the data revealed that L2 users’ educational level, age of the onset of L2
acquisition and frequency of L2 use were positively and significantly linked to their ratings of
humour in Outnumbered, but not in Yes, Prime Minister. Also, L2 users who have spent time in the
UK and felt dominant in L2 English rated the humour higher in Outnumbered but not in Yes, Prime
Minister.
 18
understanding does not preclude appreciation of humor. A similar strategy was detected in L2
users’ identification of emotion in video clips (Lorette & Dewaele 2015) where, despite having
lower proficiency scores than L1 users in English, the L2 users had broadly similar emotion
recognition scores.
A similarity emerged between our advanced L2 users and our English L1 users, with humour
appreciation being significantly linked to ease of understanding for Yes, Prime Minister. The
difficulty level was high enough for them to feel greater satisfaction in understanding the multi-
layered humour, but not so high as to lead to bafflement and disengagement. However, unlike
advanced L2 users, this relationship was also found for Outnumbered among L1 users. It is possible
that some aspects of the interactions were specific to British culture and could only be fully
appreciated by members of the in-group. In fact, this speculation could be corroborated by the
finding that the L1 users perceived Outnumbered as easier to understand, yet equally funny as Yes,
Prime Minister. Future studies on this topic could also collect qualitative data to probe into viewers’
opinions about the humour.
Despite the differences, our findings revealed that advanced L2 users were quite similar to L1
users regarding humour appreciation. It is consistent with previous reports that L2 humour
processing is on a continuum with L1 humour processing (Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. 2017; Bell and
Attardo 2010).

8. Limitations and suggestions for further research

The present study suggests that the effect of L2 proficiency on appreciation of L2 humour
depends on the proficiency level. L2 users need to reach a certain proficiency level before they can
appreciate linguistically complex L2 humour. Being multi-competent language users, they can
compensate for a lack of proficiency by mobilizing all their linguistic and cognitive resources.
However, our research design does not allow us to draw any conclusion on the specific linguistic
aspects involved in L2 users’ humour processing, an interesting area for future research. Also, the
clips showed typical middle-class British humour linked to perceptions of class differences and the
measure of humour appreciation was based on scale ratings only. Future research could investigate
a wider range of types of humour.

9. Conclusion

English L1 users perceived two humorous video clips as funnier and easier to understand than
L2 users. Contrary to L2 users, L1 users’ humour appreciation was not linked to their vocabulary
size for both video clips. The most original finding was that the relationship between L2 proficiency
 19
and humour appreciation was not linear for the Yes Prime Minister clip, contrary to previous
research using decontextualised humour. No relationship existed between proficiency and humour
appreciation for intermediate L2 users. A positive linear correlation between L2 proficiency and
humour appreciation only emerged for advanced L2 users. We argue that this effect was mediated
by ease of understanding. It is likely that advanced L2 users loved a linguistic and pragmatic
challenge and appreciated difficult humour more than the upper and lower intermediate L2 users.
However, these advanced linguistic skills made no difference in appreciating the humour in
Outnumbered which was lexically and syntactically simpler. The similarities between advanced L2
users and English L1 users suggest that with the necessary linguistic, pragmatic and sociocultural
knowledge, L2 users can close the gap with L1 users in terms of the appreciation of humour. This
supports the suggestion that L2 humour processing is on a continuum with L1 humour processing
(Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al. 2017; Bell and Attardo 2010).
 20

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Funding: This article is funded by the China Scholarship Council (10.13039/

501100004543), Grant Number: 201406290174.

Appendix
Yes, Prime Minister: “The Tangled Web”

Transcription

James Hacker: JH; Sir Humphrey Appleby: HA

JH: Well, obviously. It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple,
straightforward, honest answer.
 24
HA: Yes. Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is
some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement
inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts
insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of
sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a
heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.
JH: Epistemological? What are you talking about?
HA: You told a lie.
JH: A lie?
HA: A lie.
JH: What do you mean, a lie?
HA: I mean you…lied. Yes, I know this is a difficult concept to get across to a politician. You…ah
yes, you did not tell the truth.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8keZbZL2ero

Outnumbered – Keeping Up with The Joneses

Transcription

Barbara: Hi Sue.
Sue: Hi Barbara.
Barbara’s kid #1: Morning Sue.
Barbara’s kid #2: Morning Sue.
Barbara’s kid #3: Hi Sue.
Sue: Hi kids.
Jake: Shut it you little prick. Shut up you bloody idiot.
Sue: Boys!
Ben: I am gonna kill you.
Ben: Just because you’re bigger than me…
Barbara: Lucy, get that box by the door. It’s just one of the two things that came over the fence.
Sue: Oh just, boys, please, just chuck them back over.
Barbara: But the teapot might break.
Sue: huh…get in the car!
Sue: Thanks. Obviously, we’ll do the same thing for you, should your children throw anything in
our garden, ever.
Sue: (to boys) Can you get in the bloody car please?
Barbara: They do get excitable, do they? Mine are just the same.
Sue: (to herself) I think not.
Pete (Sue’s husband): how did she do that? Is it witch craft? Ben!!! I told you never touch
the ignition.
Ben (Sue’s kid #2): I was only trying to help.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qc7P5iOXGA

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